Two releases, one theme each. 6.55 makes forecasts more honest about how many teams are delivering and how long a sprint really is, which moves some numbers you may already be watching. 6.54 changes the screen an organisation sees when its trial has ended. Azure DevOps updates the extension automatically, so there is nothing to install.
6.55: a forecast over several teams adds up each team’s delivery
When you forecast several teams together in the Monte Carlo view, the forecast used to pool every team’s sprints into one set, which produced roughly what one team delivers whatever the number of teams. It now takes each team’s own history and adds the results together, sprint by sprint when every team has at least six finished sprints on the same cadence, and team by team otherwise. Totals are higher, because teams working in parallel deliver more than one team does.
- The result shows how many sprints and teams it draws on, for example “4–6 sprints · 3 teams”. The ? button beside it explains how the teams were combined.
- A team with no finished sprints is left out and named, instead of being counted as zero.
- The What-if Scenario uses the same method, and running the same forecast twice now gives the same result.
- A one-time note explains the change until you select “Got it”.
- A forecast for one team is unchanged.
6.55: forecasts use each sprint’s real calendar length
Sprint length used to be measured from a sprint’s start date to its end date, which comes to 11 to 13 days for a two-week sprint and overstated how much fits in a date window. Forecasts now measure from the start of one sprint to the start of the next, so a two-week sprint counts as 14 days. This applies to the “How many?” and “When will it finish?” forecasts for one team or several, the All Teams cards, and the Dashboard’s “How many?” Forecast and 30-Day Forecast tiles. Expect somewhat fewer items by a given date and somewhat later finish dates. The Sprint Forecast dashboard tile forecasts exactly one sprint, so its numbers essentially do not change.
6.55: Service Level Expectation counts items that skipped the active state
A finished item that went from New straight to a later state, with no active state in between, was left out of every Service Level Expectation count while Cycle Time counted it. These items now count, with the start taken as the first time the item left New. Where this applies, the result says “Includes N items with an estimated start”, and the SLE Violations table marks each such item “estimated start”, with a tooltip you can reach from the keyboard. Flow Efficiency is unchanged.
6.55: the Little’s Law panel is a rough check
On Flow Metrics, the panel is now titled “Little’s Law estimate (rough check)”. It works out an estimated average cycle time from average work in progress and throughput per day, using each sprint’s real calendar length, and sets it next to the actual average cycle time of the items finished in the same sprints. Sprints with no work in progress at mid-sprint are left out, and the panel says how many. The earlier cycle time floor and trend reading are no longer shown, because they depended on a fixed ten working days per sprint.
6.55: aging explanations match what is computed
The “How aging works” explainer on the Aging view, and the Aging & Blocked entry in How These Metrics Work, now describe exactly how age is counted: days in flow since the item left New, stage by stage, in whole days, with weekends excluded when Exclude Weekends is on. Two small fixes came with it. The Aging Chart subtitle no longer lists a stage name twice when a workflow mapping leaves one stage unconfigured, and “How aging works” now shows its text when there is nothing to age; before, the toggle changed to “Hide explanation” and showed nothing. The German, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese wording of the new forecast, SLE, Little’s Law and Aging screens was also reviewed and made less literal.
6.54: when a trial ends, anyone on the team can pass it to the person who buys
Only an Azure DevOps organisation admin can activate a licence, so anyone else who opened Agile Analytics after a trial ended met two greyed-out buttons and a note to “ask an admin”, with no way to do it. The screen now gives them a ready-made message for their admin or manager, with the pricing and invoice links in it, shown as an email preview with its subject. “Email this message” opens it in their own email and “Copy message” copies it. Nothing is sent from our side.
- Buying through procurement is on the screen. Admins see “Buy with a card” next to “Request an invoice or quote”, which opens the invoice and purchase order page. People who are not admins see the same link to pass on.
- The screen says what the team used and what it costs. Where the trial saw real use, it shows a rounded count of the people and sessions in that organisation during the trial (for example “25+ people”) next to the plan prices. Small numbers are never shown and no names are involved.
- Nothing was lost. The screen says Agile Analytics is paused and that the organisation’s settings and saved data are all still there.
6.54: the lock screen says who can buy and where the licence key goes
Anyone in the company can buy a licence on our website; an organisation admin then enters the key once. The screen and the ready-made message now say so in all six languages. Admins see the licence key box open straight away under “Buy with a card”, where before it sat behind an “Already have a licence key?” link. People who are not admins are told to send the key to an organisation admin, who pastes it on this screen. The red “No active license is stored” box no longer appears when a trial simply ends; it shows only when a licence key really fails to activate. For people who are not admins, “Email this message” and “Copy message” now sit above the message preview.
Related: Pricing
What you need to do
Nothing. Licensed organisations see no change on the lock screen. If you forecast several teams together, expect higher totals and a one-time note explaining why. If a figure still looks wrong after the update, use Ask Henry in the top bar and a real person replies within one business day. Work-item content stays in your Azure DevOps tenant throughout.
Related: Service status